Keep Remote Employees Engaged With Strategic Internal Communications

Written by: PoliteMail Software

According to Gallup, 43 percent of American employees work remotely at least some of the time. As the workforce becomes increasingly dispersed, internal communicators need to adjust accordingly. How can you keep remote employees engaged, involved and connected to your company?

Taylor Morrison, a homebuilding company with 1800 dispersed employees, determined effective communications strategies by tracking recipient behavior using PoliteMail. This is how Taylor Morrison communicates with their employee base—engaging remote employees and in-office workers.

1. Send mobile-friendly messages. According to benchmark data, mobile opens average upwards of 25 percent of all email opens, with some companies seeing consistent mobile open rates above 40 percent. Even in office settings, mobile messaging is particularly effective.
2. Choose a well-respected ‘sender’. If a message is sent from a company leader, it’s much more likely to be read than a message sent from a generic company account.
3. Use email metrics to inform communications strategies. When a communications team has data to back up IT and budgetary requests, the approval rate is much higher.
4. Send short emails. The longer it takes to read an email, the lower the read rate. PoliteMail’s Benchmark Data recommends sending messages with a two-minute read time or less (400-500 words). Taylor Morrison keeps business-critical emails to this recommended word count.
5. Create and send videos. Video is an effective way to tell stories and reach dispersed employees. When your entire workforce cannot come together in-person, video messages can create a more personalized experience than text-only emails.

The workforce is becoming more and more dispersed. Luckily, you can keep remote employees engaged by communicating strategically—and data backs this up. Optimize your messages for mobile, be strategic about your ‘sender,’ track and analyze data, keep your messaging short, and leverage the power of video.

[Original Post: Keep Remote Employees Engaged With Strategic Internal Communications]

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